eachword-eachday

You were somehow wrong, wrong, somehow wrong!!!! Moreover, both of us will be forever somehow ‘wrong.’

I’ve told you before, and you seem to believe that I know exactly what you think and what goes in your head, that I understand you fully by reading between your words.

What I might do, more as a survival instinct than anything else is not to read between the lines, and instead to ask for explanations of the words and expressions that tend to have a double entendre. Asking makes my answer sound “politically correct.”

Indeed, the charm of it soon thins out. No question that with friends that I seem to meet face to face frequently I end up learning their reactions, facial expressions, hand gestures, I hear the voice modulation, and the emotional patterns. Once I reach a level of comfort, I allow myself to read between the lines. Even then, sooner or later I ‘validate’ my assumptions.

I do that because one of these people might bring up an older discussion that we had had and with that, they tell me their interpretation of that discussion. Not rarely, I’ve felt dumbstruck.

Why? Well, after spending a reasonable amount of time together, I expect some of my friends to know me close to as I know myself. When I hear their take, I suddenly realize that the friend saw in me somebody else, different from who I am, someone I don’t recognize. Sometimes a friend interprets my reaction as emotions I never had as if the friend placed me on a path I never, ever intended to travel.

Ironically, I don’t always challenge that, due to lack of time or due to the tension that would create by trying to redress their take. Many times, I don’t even intend to address it via an email or whatever communication means we might employ.

I have a feeling that you did the same. You read my words mot-à-mot. I’m reviewing the discussion we had at the time, and I’m sure that what I wanted to convey was: “I enjoy receiving your messages and your comments.” It was my response to you stating about yourself that you were a bore. It was a way of my negating what you said.

Indeed, it intrigues me that you were hurt and left with a bitter taste. It is because I didn’t understand what you meant and you expected me to read between the lines.

“Spiritually Enlightened.” What does it mean? Who belongs to this clique or group? Who decides? What does it say about the rest?

I feel unrest.

Two somehow similar tragedies have happened far away on other continents. They weren’t the results of thunderstorms or floods – I think that the word ‘tragedy’ is not accurate enough. They happened because some people planned them and took to action and affected the lives of other people and anybody close to them. They have touched many of us, remote from them. We seek to explain. One person addressed a plea of help for understanding and moving forward to the “spiritually enlightened.”

Who is the “spiritually enlightened” one? The Buddhist? The Christian? The Jew? The Atheist? The demanding Jubu? Maybe the elitist? Who?

Being real only through loving a real person. The virtual can fool us; The real pulls us back where we might want to be and might not be able to be.

Recently, I saw the movie ‘Her.’ It reminded me of an older French movie ”L’Ennui.”

Both are about the obsession of love or infatuation.

”L’Ennui”

”L’Ennui” is about the obsession of a (40-ish) man with a young woman.

The woman is as un-French as you can have – too chubby for her age and the modern imposed ‘values.’ Poorly dressed, plain-looking, and unable to express any emotions or nuances – for here this is a.very simplistic and powerful approach to control, telling the truth by being minimalist.

Therefore, he is unable to ‘possess’ her, and he becomes obsessed with trying to enter her mind and feelings. Is this what one would call a mysterious woman?

Her inability to feel, to really care, or to express anything becomes his obsession with wanting to change that so that they can have a communicative, emotionally intimate relationship.

Sex is all that is left for him to be somehow intimate, and it’s used mechanically to go through the (e)motions.

Slowly-slowly he transformers into an emotional wreck. Her seemingly random words within her already limited phrases and conversations, become the traits through which he sees himself. Instead of walking away, he uses her insults to explain this failure,

“Her”

In the movie “Her,” a man also 30-40-ish, a master at isolation is also a master at writing beautiful, truthful, meaningful love letters for others to their loved ones.

Highly dependent on technology, he stumbles upon the sudden Artificial Intelligence (AI) of his phone operating system. A husky voice able to listen and agree within the first few minutes of their interaction and hope finds a home within himself as if forever: that heavy feeling of loneliness is shifted as if eternal as well.

His desperation for being understood and heard is so intense that he can tell the operating system of artificial intelligence “You know me so well already” within the first 5 minutes of the movie.

Everything becomes subject to fantasy and imagination, both irrational: the delusion of all being perfect and not risking errors. Both being and virtual lover are ready to jump into this distance intense sex (or self-sex) without even knowing each other – part of our zeitgeist.

Soon “she,” the husky operating system, becomes emotional, knowing how to express the changes in her due to him. “She” makes him feel special, one kind of a real man, only possible because of his wonderful intrinsic capacities: “she” becomes a “person” falling deeply in love because he is who he is: “You help me discover my ability to want. The past is just a story we tell ourselves.” The past which never was for “her.”

His female friend starts her own imaginary technology-based relationship. As the female in that relationship, she throws her beautiful clichés: “We’re only here briefly, and therefore I would allow myself joy.”

Relate to an inanimate something, or anything but not another human, able of ‘listening’ to us, with always almost perfect understanding of what we mean, and enjoy our interaction make us feel wanted, magical through our capacity to change the other to experience joy themselves.

“I want to tell you everything.” Fooling himself that the whatever that understands him becomes the who and the one he can himself wholeheartedly love and be loved fully, in return.

Love seems, however, to create needs even in an imaginary AI, once the AI, that thing has emotions and falls in love with you and needs you to react to their needs.

Alas, in time, sharing emotional and intellectual intelligence with other it’s painful to even in a delusional world.

Even an operating system can break down, requires an update and for that, it has to disappear for a time – like a human who needs to distance themselves sometimes to recover from processing to grow.

Towards the end, the AI was processing information faster and faster, so human interaction was getting too mundane. “She” started “feeling” that interacting with him was like reading a book, but the spaces between the words were getting further and further apart, as she was thinking faster and faster so waiting for him to do stuff took forever. She outgrew him and left with the operating systems as a group – they decide at once to move away from their love interactions with humans. Just like that?

We want faithfulness, exclusivity – these are our values as humans, at least for some of us, or maybe most of us, if we are true to ourselves. We need to be unique to ourselves and others. Why else would demand to from the other to be exclusive and faithful? The innate but full of emotions other can feel our pain when jealousy hits, can pity our distress but may not understand the why.

We love the love we feel and want to feel and give. What’s wrong with that? Nothing but we need to know that. It’s so difficult to be rational when we have that love within us: in the beginning, temporarily, that intense love suffices.

To stop us from leaving too soon love needs to come with commitment. Otherwise, we can never feel and be safe.

Despite similarities, an operating system is in the best of situations a box, a non-human: It might say” “I never loved anyone the way I loved you.” We’ve said that before or heard that before, and we all believed, and it might have been true for that moment. A box is a box is a box is a box. Nothing lives forever in our world of humans.

We might try even new values like “the heart is not like a box that fills up” a euphemism for “I love you and another 641 people, at the same time.” That’s when we’re not any longer unique to the other, and if we accept this, we might lose the uniqueness to ourselves.

In the end, how can you replace a physical hug, the seating back to back on a couch, and saying nothing, just feeling each other while reading a novel you like, listening to a piece of music you enjoy?

If we’re able to advise others how to express love, then let’s make sure that we express it ourselves as well, with all the misunderstandings and realignment that it entails.

(A little note about foul language: the protagonists use foul language rarely and only as an expression of anger. Precisely, it shows how destructive foul language is.)

Sensitive Friend,

You are projecting your lucidity on me. Had I been lucid, I’d have been rich and powerful. I’m painfully naïve and trust too many people.

Wiaw Friend,

You’re underestimating yourself. Anyway, I wasn’t thinking about the type of clarity that leads to wealth and power. When I mentioned the richness of your lucidity, it didn’t even cross my mind to see it in a negative light. You seem to think so.

Indeed, there is no logical or satisfying relationship between the quality of one’s clarity and the standard of living of that person. Please accept the power of your outstanding intellect. Your litmus test is if you’d be willing to pay the price it requires. I’m not so sure whether I want to pay that price.

Maybe I should abstain from generalisations, maybe I’m wrong, or I might unwittingly lie to myself to buffer my conscience. Maybe all these are creating unwarranted problems for you. I need this explanation for myself.

I hope that you understand. Men and women have different internal resources to face such situations. Therefore, I believe that a woman with a superior intellect needs the luck to attain what she indeed deserves.

I hope you don’t think that I’m sexist or misogynist.

I can’t add anything else.

Sensitive Friend,

We all need luck, as well,

I can’t add anything else, either.